By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

EDUCATION Minister Glenys Hanna Martin said she had been assured the Gender Violence Bill is in its final drafting stages, saying the legislation must be brought to the House of Assembly.

Eagerness and interest in the legislation have grown amid escalating reports of violence against women.

In just the past week, three women were killed. Yesterday, the latest woman to become a murder victim was identified as 42-year-old Yinka Maria Strachan after her bullet-riddled body was found in a canal. 

“I spoke to the minister (of social services) to find out the status of it and it’s in its final stages and I think there is consultation that’s going on,” Mrs Hanna Martin said yesterday. “I believe that it’s dealing with more issues than a straightforward issue, and that’s why it’s probably being shared now for consultation but the legislation has to be brought because the message has to be sent that these forms of violence are not acceptable and that there will be consequences and we hope it will help to serve as a deterrent.”

Last month, Social Services Minister Obie Wilchcombe told The Tribune the Gender Violence Bill would not be rushed to Parliament. He was responding to former Attorney General Allyson Maynard Gibson, who noted the bill was initially drafted 10 years ago.

 A spokesperson for the Bahamas Crisis Centre told The Tribune yesterday the government has been consulting the centre on the bill.

 The Tribune obtained a 64-page version of the 2016 bill.

 The bill mandates the government formulate and approve a national gender-based violence policy to establish strategic aims for eradicating gender-based violence.

 It says victims of gender-based violence are owed a professional duty of care from professionals, which should involve helping victims obtain shelter, medical treatment, legal services, counselling or other needed services.

 The bill outlines what officers must do when a written complaint about a gender-based crime is lodged. This includes interviewing the parties and witnesses, recording the complaint in detail and providing the victim with an extract of that complaint, and accompanying and protecting the victim as they seek to retrieve their personal belongings.

 Mrs Hanna Martin said she is concerned about violence against women.

 “it’s very, very concerning,” she told reporters. “This is a global phenomenon, and to see an increase in our own country. We’ve always had high levels but to see this increase, at least in recent times, is very, very disturbing.”

 “I just happened to be reading a research piece by the World Health Organisation, which was done in 2005, which speaks to this issue of gender-based violence and I think it’s something that we have to really ponder upon as a people.”

 “We’re seeing it in the schools,” she said. “We’re seeing it on the streets and then you have this peculiar, very insidious thing of violence against women or gender-based violence which has very serious implications because a lot of times it happens in the home and it has just terrible implications. So, I think the nation needs to reflect. I think a lot of it has to do with how women are viewed, the stereotypes associated with women, the continuing inequities certainly in our constitution and elsewhere, and cultural perpetuations which suggest that women do not have equal placement in certain environments.”

 She also responded to Free National Movement critics who said women parliamentarians in the Progressive Liberal Party have not been vocal enough in advocating for women’s issues.

 “No one has ever accused me for not being vocal and certainly, no one in the opposition Senate can accuse me of that so that would be my answer to them,” she said. “They would have to speak their conscience and speak their truth and I will do the same. Certainly, I don’t think that they’re in a position to say that I’m not vocal. I’m very vocal when I deem it necessary and so that’s my answer to them.”